Re: [Ayatana] Farewell to the notification area

[Luke Benstead <kazade@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 22 April 2010 18:14, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Conscious User wrote:
>> " 1) Communicating the goals and current status to end users. The amount
>> of people who think the messaging menu is only a launcher, for
>> example, is overwhelming.
>
> If people don't figure out how to use something we designed, the answer
> is to improve the design, and not to mount a campaign to educate them :-)
>

Slightly OT: I know the indicators don't have tooltips as an
experiment to see if they are just cruft, and I know tooltips in the
notification area were being abused just as much as the notification
area itself. But I really think a hint like the ones on the
Application, System and Places menus would help. Even if it was just
"Read incoming messages and launch messaging applications" or
something. Icons can certainly go a long way at conveying the purpose
of something, but does an envelope mean "Send an email" or "Check or
email" or "Start the email program" or "Send a fax"? I think putting
sensible "this does xyz" tooltips might really aid discoverability.

One thing I really like about tooltips is they don't appear
immediately. This sort of mimics life outside of the computer; if you
are to make a decision to do something, you'll sometimes pause to
decide whether it's what you want to do. I find tooltips can give that
nice little nudge to say "yep, you do want this" or "no, this isn't
the menu you're looking for".

Anyway, just my $0.02

Luke.